Exploring Fair Trade Attitude and Fair Trade Behavior of Turkish Consumers

Abstract

The consumption of fair trade goods in the developed world has gained in popularity over the last years, however in Turkey it is not a well-known concept yet. Within this paper, we focused on Turkish consumer's understanding of fair trade, trying to analyze the triggering factors forming attitude and behavioral outcomes as intention to buy and willingness to pay more for those fair trade products. Fair trade attitude and behavioral dimensions had been studied on 139 participants (n=139). Our results indicated that fair trade attitude can be empowered by widening access to fair trade products, which can be accepted as a basic marketing principle. On the other hand, fair trade purchasing intention seemed linked to the fair trade attitude. Therefore, in order to increase consumers' likelihood to purchase these products, it is vital to establish a sense of understanding in the consumers' minds. Since, fair trade products are at average % 10 more expensive than normal products; willingness to pay more for those products can be explained by their sense of price acceptability. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of The 8th International Strategic Management Conference